Barbecue – Beast Roast Recipe

Cooking a whole lamb takes a lot of planning and preparation, but it’s well worth it for a really special event. Talk to your local butcher or meat wholesaler about getting the right size of beast for your purposes. You should assume three pounds for each guest if you’re not serving anything much else.

Now you need to think about how you’re going to cook it – there are two basic methods, one is on a spit over an open fire and the other is in a pit. Whichever you decide on, you should allow an area about five feet wide and three to four feet across and a huge amount of charcoal! Don’t cook on wood unless you’re used to it, because it can be hard to judge the heat it gives off and the flames rise higher which can lead to a charred beast, rather than a succulent roasted one!

Spit roasting is a traditional method for roasting a lamb, seen across the Middle East and is best done with the support of a U shaped structure of bricks, blocks, or an earthen mound to protect the fire from the wind and help focus the heat. In front of this structure you should site the supports – the lamb is skewered onto a pole about six feet long supported on trestles – some halal butchers rent these systems out. The lamb is rotated over the fire which sited behind the spit rather than under it to avoid starting a grease fire under your lamb.

Pit cooking means you need to dig a hole four feet by four feet and three feet deep with the floor lined with rocks or bricks. In this system you need to build a fire in the pit the night before you have your feast – which is allowed to burn for around three hours before raking the coals aside. You set down wet burlap bags, then the lamb, then more wet burlap. Now you can ladle the coals around the covered lamb and bury it, using the earth from the hole you dug. It cooks slowly overnight and the following afternoon your lamb will be ready.

Barbecue beast photograph by Paul Kelehar, used under a creative commons attribution licence.